Aircraft remakes take off

Nextant Aerospace LLC president James Miller said he has begun selling its 400NEXT light jets, which is built on the airframe of the Beechcraft 400A, a popular light jet that first hit the market in the early 1980s.

They're building jet airplanes in Richmond Heights these days. Well, maybe “stripping down and rebuilding to like-new condition” would be the more accurate description.
Whatever the definition, 3-year-old Nextant Aerospace LLC has begun selling its 400NEXT twin- engine, eight-seat aircraft and finding buyers willing to plunk down about $3.9 million on a like-new turbojet that flies farther and on less fuel than the plane it once was.
Today, six planes in various stages of dismantling and rebuilding sit in a 22,000-square-foot hangar next door to company headquarters at Cuyahoga County Airport in Richmond Heights. Nextant president James Miller said the company already has orders for these six.
Nextant took the first plane up on its maiden flight at the end of February and expects to begin delivery of the planes in the first half of 2011, once the plane passes 300 hours of airborne testing and wins certification of airworthiness from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The 400NEXT is built on the airframe of the Beechcraft 400A, a popular light jet that first hit the market in the early 1980s.
Mr. Miller said he believes the company's target of selling 120 of the planes over the next 10 years is “on the low side” of the program's potential, even though the market for jet aircraft is sluggish now.
But he said the market runs and cycles, and it will return. He also pointed out there is a fleet of roughly 600 of this model plane still flying, as well as 180 Jayhawks, the military version of the aircraft.
Those planes, and others like it, he said, will become obsolete as the FAA develops the next-generation air traffic control system that will replace ground-based radar and communications systems with GPS tracking and low-orbit satellite-based communications.
“The current airplanes are ill-equipped to take advantage of the next-generation airspace,” he said. “This airplane was state-of-the-art in the late 1970s and early 1980s.” The 400NEXT will have the latest of this avionics equipment.

Everything old is new again

Industry observers say other companies tried similar rebuilding programs in the 1980s and 1990s with some success and that Nextant's program could win a solid spot in the industry.
“It's a good idea,” said Stephen Pope, editor of Business Jet Traveler, a Midland Park, N.J., publication covering business aviation, the major market for light jets like the 400NEXT.
“Taking an airplane like the Beechcraft 400, an older airplane, modernizing the cockpit, giving it new engines and putting a new interior in, what it does, it gives you a really modern airplane at a pretty low acquisition price,” Mr. Pope said. He said a comparable new plane would cost about $7 million.
Nextant buys used Beechcraft jets and strips them down to skin and bones, replacing engines, landing gear and fuel pumps.
“All the things that can fail,” Mr. Miller said. “We reduce the airplane down to about what it was like when it was one-third of the way down the assembly line.”
Mr. Miller said the airframe — the structural components including the fuselage, wings and skin of an airplane — has a very long life and need not be replaced.
The 400NEXT is a small jet. Its cabin is less than five feet across and four feet nine inches from floor to ceiling in the center aisle. It's configured to seat a maximum of eight passengers — Mr. Miller points out that the lavatory seat comes with a seatbelt — though it more typically would carry four passengers. It has LED lighting in the cabin, a telephone and a galley that can be stocked with beverages and snacks.
The like-new plane extends the range of the Beechcraft 400 from 1,300 nautical miles to over 2,000 nautical miles and reduces fuel consumption by 32% for a typical flight, with a slight increase in cruising speed, according to a company fact book.
At the moment, Nextant has only 10 of its own employees, though it has 50 engineers working on contract. Mr. Miller expects the number of employees to grow in six months to 25, as the program moves from development to production.

Navigating a rough market

Nextant is one of a group of companies linked to Kenn Ricci and his Directional Aviation Capital, a private investment firm based in Richmond Heights. In addition to Nextant, Direction Aviation's investment portfolio includes Flight Options LLC, the fractional aircraft operator, and Corporate Wings and Cutter Aviation Inc., which provide aircraft maintenance and support services at airports.
Being part of that corporate family may be an asset for Nextant, since the Beechcraft jets are a significant part of Flight Options' fleet of 100 aircraft and the Flight Options mechanics are familiar with the aircraft.
“There are a lot of synergies,” Mr. Miller said.
Mr. Pope and others believe this is a good time to be in the market buying used airplanes, since prices are down as much as 50% from highs two years ago. The flip side, though, is that potential buyers aren't buying right now.
“I think (the 400NEXT) is really good,” said Tom Crowell Jr., president of Jet Brokers Inc., a jet aircraft broker based in Chesterfield, Mo. “It's just that the market is in such terrible shape right now, that I don't know if their timing is right.
“But they're smart business people, and they've been around for a while,” he said. “If they would have come out with this in 2008, they probably would have done a couple hundred of them by now. That's not an exaggeration.”